With support from the University of Richmond
History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Polls

HNN Poll: Brian VanDeMark ... Does the Punishment Fit the Crime?

Last spring historian Brian VanDeMark, a tenured professor at the Naval Academy, was accused of plagiarism in a story broken by the NYT. Five scholars alleged that he had improperly borrowed passages from their work. The passages appeared in VanDeMark's Pandora's Keepers: Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb (2003). Little, Brown, the publisher, immediately withdrew the book.

This week the Naval Academy announced that it had found that VanDeMark was guilty of plagiarism and withdrew his tenure, reducing him in rank to an entry-level assistant professor. His pay will be cut from $73,317 to $63,043. Dean William C. Miller, according to an account in the Washington Post, declared at a news conference,"I relied very heavily on the judgment of the professors we used to consider this inquiry [and they found that] the whole approach to documenting the sources of the book was flawed." He added that VanDeMark did not seem to have intentionally plagiarized the other scholars' work.

Little, Brown says it is reissuing a revised edition of the book.

Reaction to the Naval Academy's decision was mixed. William Lanouette, one of the authors who was plagiarized, told the Post that the punishment was too light:"I speak from three decades in journalism, where if you commit plagiarism once, you can be fired. This doesn't seem to be -- I think it was called carelessness? It seemed to a number of us that were ripped off that it was deliberate, even predatory. . . . I think it's a very poor compromise."

Gregg Herken, who was also plagiarized, said that he approved of the punishment:"I'm relieved he wasn't fired. That would have been too severe."

Robert Norris, another historian who was plagiarized, wrote in a post on HNN's discussion boards, that the punishment did not fit the crime:"You either uphold standards or you don’t. In my opinion the Naval Academy failed its responsibility to abide by its own stated principles and has condoned an egregious case of plagiarism. This is not the Academy’s proudest moment and it may come back to haunt them."

Related Links